1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to condition responsive indicating systems (340/500) with particular coupling link (340/531) including personal portable device (340/539.11) wherein said condition relates to article placement or removal (340/568.1) and said particular coupling link comprises radio (340/539.1).
2. General Background
Universal serial bus (USB) port connectible devices: functionally connectible through a USB port to a personal computer (PC) from and through which direct current (DC), typically 5 volt (5V), power is derived and operation enabled; are widely used and encompass many devices including ‘flash’ and hard disk memory ‘drives’ as well as USB interfaced devices including wireless, typically infrared (IR) as opposed to radio frequency (RF), adapters for keyboards and ‘mice’: i.e. input and cursor control devices.
Although USB port connectible devices were practically unknown ten years ago the superiority of serial, as opposed to parallel, buses in data transmission combined with a robust physical configuration easily connected and disconnected without damage to the electrical contacts has achieved nearly universal usage of USB ports on PCs and hence a proliferation of compatible devices.
USB port connectible devices have a connector that is nominally male in being insertable into a USB port but the electrical contacts are not comprised of pins, nor has the port sockets, each having, instead, a row of copper blades biased against each other in connection with the proper sense of the connection ensured by adjacent empty and solid longitudinal halves of a generally rectangular configuration defined by a stamped and formed metal extension on the USB port connectible device.
While USB memory drive replacement cost is typically under $50 the data stored thereon may be very valuable. Doctors, attorneys, engineers, accountants and other professionals: i.e. people holding a form of professional registration and legally responsible for competent performance of their work; must often insert a USB port connectible device, typically a memory drive, into a computer previously unknown to them at a site also unfamiliar to them. Journalists, authors, lobbyists, and other propagandists protected by the First Amendment also may inadvertently leave a USB port connectible memory drive behind functionally connected to a USB port of a computer that is not within their residence, office, or other area within their realm of control that contains extremely sensitive, if not legally liable, data thereon.
As the USB ports are found on the back of ‘tower’ configuration PCs typically found in workplaces, located on a visually obscure computer back panel, it is not difficult for even an extremely intelligent business executive, much less an absent minded technical type, to forget their USB port connectible device functionally connected to this type of computer or even a ‘laptop’ style PC where the USB port is typically on a side of the same. The owner of the USB connectible device furthermore may not, owing to a multitude of reasons including the number of PCs and sites visited on a given day, remember which PC or site the USB connectible device was most likely left.
Even if both the site and the particular PC to which the USB port connectible device was left functionally connected are recalled precisely it is not beyond possibility that a competitor or other comparatively unsympathetic person at that site might fail to admit of finding this particular item. It is also considered that at any public site such as an Internet ‘cafe’ an employee might regard the USB port connectible device left behind as a gift which would be ungracious to acknowledge even if this employee did, by some remote chance, associate the particular device left behind with its owner.
There are, in brief, a multitude of circumstances especially in today's extremely busy and ethically complex society, that could easily occasion failure to return an inadvertently left behind USB port connectible device including a memory drive possessing data valuable to the owner, even if to no one else, in addition to wholly understandable inability of the owner to recall where this device may have been left functionally connected to a PC particularly if that PC is routinely left ‘on’ or powered as is a commonplace in many workplaces and other sites private, public or non-profit.
3. Discussion of the Prior Art
Tracking location of a person or other moving object generally requires ‘plural distinct sensors’ (340/539.22) and is hence beyond the scope of the pertinent prior art which, while also responsive to a particular condition and using a particular coupling link (340/531), is not concerned with tracking and does not use plural distinct sensors. ‘Having a particular safety function’ (340/532) is extraneous to and excluded from the presently pertinent prior art because safety is not involved. The particular condition responded to with a wireless electrical communication link characterizing the pertinent prior art comprises ‘article placement or removal’ (340/568.1) but not with a detectable device disposed on the protected article for which reason subclasses 572.1 and 572.8: ‘Specified device housing or attachment means’; are also both beyond the scope of the pertinent prior art as subclass 572.8 is subordinate to subclass 572.1: “Detectable device on protected article (e.g. ‘tag’)” which is emphatically not the case with the present invention; and hence devices using radio frequency identification (RFIDs) are wholly excluded from the presently pertinent prior art as is subclass 539.23: “Proximity”; as the same is subordinate to subclass 539.22: “Having plural distinct sensors”; because the present invention does not use plural sensors.
The present invention uses a radio frequency signal and an alarm to assist in reminding the owner of a USB port connectible device that the same has been left functionally connected to a PC. Since no prior art using radio frequency and an alarm is known to be specifically concerned with a USB port connectible device: i.e. ‘USB device’ as such are commonly known; the closest prior art is considered to use radio frequency and an alarm and to be concerned with a PC or peripheral device or concerned peripherally with a USB device and using radio frequency and an alarm or to be concerned primarily with a USB device and using an alarm or radio frequency.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,011,471 for an ‘Alarm system’ intended to protect a computer or other electronic device having a slot for a diskette discloses a radio receiver with decoder insertable into a disc drive “slot” with alarm activated as a result of “the code signal from the radio transmitter unit” ceasing which unit also has an on/off switch while “the receiver includes a security switch controlled to turn on/off the radio receiver unit when inserting/removing from the slot of the electronic apparatus.” (Abstract)
U.S. Pat. No. 6,459,374 for an ‘Anti-Theft Computer Security System’, discloses “a USB connector” with a cable extending “through the housing section” “connected to a central alarm monitoring unit” intended to protect a computer. An “alarm sounds” if “the USB connector is disconnected from the computer . . . or if the cable is cut” (Abstract).
2007CN-10186141 can “monitor an article during sports”: using a ZigBee transceiver which, as receiver (22) receives a data signal and transmits to a microprocessor with “buzzer (23)”. A “shell (11) is mounted” with an USB interface. (Abstract)
U.S. Pat. No. 7,026,933 B2 discloses “a USB device capable of connecting to a USB port of a computer and an alarm sub-system to cause an audible alarm to be generated based on a signal generated within the USB device.” (Abstract)
U.S. Pat. No. 7,362,227 B2 discloses an ‘Anti-theft and security system for computers’ which “includes a control device capable of connecting to an external port of the portable computer. The control device includes a wireless receiver” and is “capable of enabling and disabling a security function executed by the computer based on a wireless signal received by the wireless receiver.” (Abstract)
US 2009/0015418 A1 discloses “an electronic device having a detachable part and a main unit with a communicating section. In order to prevent the electronic device from being left, (it includes) a sensor detecting a detached state of the part; a first timer measuring time” part is detached “from the main unit”; “and a warning section issues a warning . . . if the first timer detects the passage of a first time period.” (Abstract)
CN201191407 (Y) discloses a “USB watchdog with remote alarm function” uses “a USB interface” for transferring telephone signal “into serial level, and the main processor, therefore, the USB watchdog with a remote alarm function can realize the remote alarm function on the base of having a watchdog function.” (Abstract)
Statement of Need
While the prior art discloses use of RF and alarms using USB devices the only known reference in the pertinent prior art actually concerned with safeguarding against lost of a USB device, US 2009/0015418 A1, “issues a warning” only in response to the elapse of a predetermined period of time after detachment of an associated part.
Since the owner of a USB device typically does not use the device every time for a predetermined period of time two problems with this approach to preventing the USB device “from being left” are discerned: (1) the predetermined period of time before issuance of a warning may be longer than the period of usage, in which case the owner may have left it behind to the mercy of a competitor or other relatively unsympathetic person who may be the sole beneficiary of this ‘warning’; and (2) the predetermined period of time may be shorter than the period of usage, in which case the ‘warning’ will only comprise an annoyance to the owner during use of the USB device.
A need is hence discerned for a means of preventing the loss of a USB device by inadvertently leaving the same functionally connected to a USB port of a computer that is both effective and not annoying during use regardless of the period of time the device is used.